DONATIONS to one of Britain’s biggest health charities are being used to fund experiments on dogs in vivisection laboratories.

Beagles are often used in experiments. In many cases dogs are injected with experimental drugs

And in the past five years, more than 1,000 cats have been used in the UK for experiments by tax-funded universities.

Dogs are being tested on in scientific labs at the rate of 10 a day, with the British Heart Foundation among those that have commissioned research.

The cats and dogs are cut open under anaesthetic, allowing scientists to insert tubes that inject prototype drugs or other chemicals, mainly for medical and veterinary use.

Experiments on cats have involved invasive skull surgery to implant electrodes and the stitching of eyes to allow examination of brain patterns.

The British Heart Foundation’s Betty McBride said research was vital for saving lives

There are substantial differences between humans and other animals and it is unacceptable that cats and dogs continue to suffer

Michelle Thew, chief executive of the BUAV

The animals are frequently killed after the experiments to allow post mortem research.

Home Office figures show that since 2007, 23,854 dogs have been used in 34,669 tests, while in the same period 1,034 cats have been used.

Last year alone, 3,214 dogs, the bulk of them beagles but also some cross-breeds, were used, a rise of 11 per cent on 2011.

The organisations responsible for the tests insist the animals are used only as a last resort and under strict conditions but animal welfare campaigners say the research is unethical and scientifically questionable.

The British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection (BUAV) has discovered four scientific papers in the past three years that have had funding from the British Heart Foundation.

A paper published in 2011 detailed experiments funded by the charity at the University of Leeds where scientists cut open 17 beagles to test, among other things, changes in the dogs’ blood pressure in special circumstances.

These general images of caged beagles highlight the ethical concerns of animal testing

The dogs were all anaesthetised, but were bled to death at the end of the surgery.

Other papers have published the results of British Heart Foundation projects in Canada, the US and Holland.

One study at Maastricht University in Holland involved chemicals being injected into anaesthetised beagles to make their hearts beat faster.

The British Heart Foundation’s director of policy, Betty McBride said the research was vital for saving lives.

She said: “Every application for research funding goes through a rigorous independent review procedure and of the many hundreds of life-saving research projects we’ve funded over the last five years, 0.3 per cent have involved dogs.

“We proactively seek the reduction of animal use, and the replacement of animals with other research methods where possible.

The animals are frequently killed after the experiments to allow post mortem research.

However, Michelle Thew, chief executive of the BUAV, said the public would be “shocked to learn their charitable donations and taxes have been funding experiments on cats or dogs” and called on the Government to ban them.

She said the tests involved “highly invasive surgery, pain and distress” and that “such research is both unethical and scientifically questionable”.

“There are substantial differences between humans and other animals and it is unacceptable that, despite a range of non-animal methods available, cats and dogs continue to suffer,” she added.

Cats and dogs are given special protection in animal research under the law and the Home Office requires a licence for each test.

However, some British universities also commission tests abroad.

The BUAV says while people are aware rodents are used in labs, it's not the case with cats and dogs

Last year, Queen Mary University in east London funded experiments on dogs in China to test for the effects of nerve damage following traumas.

The college said it selected the Chinese lab because “it had the most stringent ethical and welfare processes” for the work involved.

At Cardiff University, scientists used 19 kittens in 2009 to test parts of the brain for vision.

The university said strict guidelines had been applied.

Tory MP Mark Pritchard has called on the Government to ensure a reduction in the number of live experiments but the scientific pressure group Understanding Animal Research said the long term trend was already downwards: in 2001, 800 cats were used in the UK, while 5,554 dogs were tested on in labs.

And the organisation's chief executive, Wendy Jarrett, disputed claims from the BUAV that there was no scientific need for the tests.

She said: "Research on dogs in the early part of the last century led to the discovery that giving insulin could treat people with diabetes.

"They are also used in cardiovascular research because the dog heart functions in a very similar way to a human heart.

"They were used to develop the heart-lung machine that enables open-heart surgery. Cats’ vision develops in a very similar way to that of human beings, so they are used in research into blindness and other visual problems like squint and lazy eye.

"Treatments currently given to children for these problems have mainly been developed using cats, since there are so many similarities between the two species’ visual systems."

She added: "It’s worth also noting that many of the dogs used are for toxicology safety studies. These are required by law. Any new medicine has to be tested in both rodents, usually rats, and a larger non-rodent mammal, usually dogs, before it can legally be given to human volunteers."

Home Office Minister James Brokenshire said: "Cats, dogs, non-human primates and horses are given special protection under the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986 and may only be used if no other species is suitable or it is not practicable to obtain animals of any other species that are suitable for the purposes of the relevant programme of work."